Nokia joins Sprint WiMax bandwidth-wagon

Sprint Nextel has signed up another big partner for its deployment of a WiMax mobile broadband network around the U.S.

Nokia will supply infrastructure and client hardware for the high-speed network, which is designed to far outstrip cellular speeds, Sprint announced Friday. The Finnish mobile giant joins Intel, Samsung Electronics and Motorola as a vendor to Sprint, which plans its WiMax network as a 4G (fourth-generation) system to complement 3G (third generation).

When Sprint chose WiMax last year, it automatically boosted the prospects of the fledgling wireless broadband technology. The addition of Nokia, a dominant cellular supplier outside the U.S., is a boon to Sprint in its mission to foster a large vendor ecosystem around WiMax. Having more equipment providers, especially ones with a global presence, should put more products on the market and increase manufacturing volumes so device prices lower.

Nokia will supply network gear, including its Nokia Flexi WiMax base transceiver stations, and develop and market mobile devices including multimedia computers and Internet tablets, the carrier said. It will also help develop services and applications and foster global adoption of WiMax to make international roaming possible.

WiMax is based on the IEEE 802.16 standard. Sprint will use the mobile variant of that specification, called 802.16e, and expects its network to deliver 2M bps (bits per second) to 4M bps downstream around a metropolitan area. Though the new system will be far faster than 3G, according to Sprint, it will be aimed mostly at mobile data applications while 3G will remain the primary cellular voice network.

Customers will be able to use WiMax on a broad range of devices in addition to notebook PCs, Sprint said. They will be able to use it for mobile videoconferencing, transfers of large data files and other applications, according to the carrier.

Sprint will begin rolling out WiMax late this year and expects to reach 100 million U.S. residents by the end of 2008. Services will be priced for the mass market, the company has said.